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Old Firm Colts in L2


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23 minutes ago, Pride Of The Clyde said:

So the reasoning behind this whole proposal is to develope Scotland's brightest and most talented potential players  for the  future and the best they can come up with for their development is to hone their skills against joiners and brickies etc, that play part time football, no disrespect to these players but come on tae fcuk, the reasons the vast majority of them play In a very poor league is because to put it bluntly this is the highest level most will ever reach with their ability, what are youngsters going to learn from this?

Rory McAllister's a tradesman. He's better than just about anything Celtic or Rangers have in their colts. Peaso, McGovern, Goodwillie, Templeman, Dillon, McGuigan, Dunlop. How many names do you want? The colts don't get that kind of challenge every week. Only an arrogant Old Firm supporter would think they might.

Charlie Adam's spell at St.Mirren - competing with our squad of rejects - was foundational to his success at Rangers, Blackpool and wherever he is now. Wouldn't have happened to a reserve-league idler. If you made the Colts teams part-time, they'd take doings from teams down here. Their full-time fitness is the only thing that'll make it interesting.

You'll recall that Ross Perry, Kyle Bradley and Jack Breslin are/were 'Old Firm Colts', aye? Bad examples though: most of them haven't learned a thing, though to see them play you know they could.

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Full-time, sub-first-team-football in Scotland has long been the place where players with potential go to have it reduced or removed entirely. It's an environment almost completely without incentive; a passing place which barely simulates the reality of a competitive match and where the participants are all justified pessimists about their chances in the big team. I'd like to see that changed. But it's a hard-sell, when the gains are so dispersed and the losses are so concentrated.

Think about tariffs on imported goods. You hear a lot about those in the news at the moment. Sometimes, a government creates them to preserve a domestic industry - like steel manufacturing - which is being out-competed by an equivalent foreign industry. The gain is a concentrated one: thousands of jobs are spared; the unions and the politicians celebrate. And the loss is dispersed: the price of anything made of steel goes up, and any non-steel-industry business which needs steel doesn't hire so many workers because of its cost or, alternatively, it pays-off a whack of workers as a result of the increased price. It's easier to notice and measure the concentration of 'saved jobs' than the dispersal of lost jobs.

Where am I going with this? Well, let's say we let the Scottish Premiership teams field sides in League 2 on the condition that no players older than 21 could feature. The concentrated loss is in the reaction of League 2 and SFL clubs generally. And you can see it expressed on this thread: 'Points are devalued'; 'We hear enough about the Old Firm!'; 'It'd ruin competition!' and so on. The dispersed gain would be in the number of full-time players between the ages of 16-21 who got to experience a genuinely competitive match on a regular basis and who, consequently, were able to realise their potential; at least to a greater extent. Put another way, the floor of quality would be lifted throughout the country. Sure, the 'rich might get richer', but, as is the case now, they don't need all the players they bring into the game. Difference would be they'd get a much better return on their investment if they could get them playing as a unit primed for the first team and have them faced with a proper challenge every week. Connectedly, we'd all see a spill-over supply of better quality players to the lower leagues; and a spill-out of those who were replaceable with the newly better quality feed from above, demanding similar or less wages.

This is all long-term of course; most things worthwhile are. And so it follows that the national team would be likely to see an increase in the quality of players coming into its ranks over time.

Arguments about crowd increases or decreases don't persuade me; I think we'd see only small increased attendance if anything. And noise-making about the sting being taken out of things, or that the Old Firm rule the land; those arguments just bore me.

This is  well worth trying. And you don't need to frame it as 'good for the game'; you'll see a better quality of player at your club over time. Putting up with arrogant derision from Premiership teams' supporters is already inscribed in our system by fact of the U20 teams being allowed-into cups. I don't mind it, even it becomes more frequent. Though on that point - would we get humped every week? - the answer is blatantly 'No'. You don't take a group of young boys into a league of experienced, largely ex-professional players, albeit part-time players, and dish out a drubbing each week. Maybe you pick them off in a midweek game when their legs are gone, but otherwise you're in for a shock if you're expecting an easy ride.

Everyone, critics of this proposal included, seems to acknowledge that the game's in a bad way in Scotland and not just because of Rangers recent destruction. Quality's sliding. Interest is waning. And nobody's got an alternative with any evidence behind it; god forbid we rehash the several tiers of Unders-and-Reserves we had a while back.

I'm a minority of one, I know. But that's nothing new. I say we give it a bash.


Darren Ramsey was one of the Rangers under 20s team most promising players. Darren Ramsey. You’re a Clyde fan, enough said.
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I’ve tried to summarise the financial pros/cons of these Colt teams to Berwick as an example of what we’re looking at, please bear with my post if it waffles a bit.

The average attendance of Irn Bru Cup round one games was 232. If you work out a rough income per head from Berwick’s statement and attendance figures, gate receipts before the Colt Boost would be roughly £4300. Add the colt boost of £15,000 and assume all sponsor packages and hospitality sells out (prices from Berwick site) that’s another rough £9300. Total income £28600. Here we’ll add £2000 saving of travel costs (I assume £500 a bus for four games). Total benefit to club £30600.

At present, using the same maths, four league games would bring in £12200. If you add two more home games, say if Cove and Spartans were promoted, the figure is £18300.

So on the face of it the benefit of a 12 team league including colts not HL/LL team is £12300. Now all that money is subject to VAT. Now it’s £10250.

Now there are additional costs/losses associated purely with the six games v colt teams. I’ve estimated here but if you say £1500 for extra policing/stewards (probably be more), loss of sales of other stuff (in the event colts fans don’t fill tickets) of say £250, you piss of half a dozen season ticket holders that’s £700 odd, you lose half a dozen fans from every other away game who are also pissed off… goodbye another £1300. Whilst you’re at it a couple of season ticket holders were also sponsors in one way or another, common at this level, that’s another £500. Costs/losses associated with colts = £4250

So you’re looking at a total profit of £6000 for having those colts. But hang on, what if the Colt system means you lose out on cheap loan players and need an extra £150 a week over a 40 week season for wages?

Ladies and Gentlemen we arrive at £0.

I doubt you’d need extra stewarding or police, because nobody would go. Who’s going to bother their arse to contact Rangers or Celtic for an away ticket to see their youth team in a League 2 game, when you could simply walk up and pay on the day through the home gate. You might get a handful for the first game or two, but assuming Berwick stay in this league, Celtic and Rangers youths would be playing at Shielfield 3 times a season each. Any interest in the pointless fixtures (for them) would disappear fairly quickly.

A quick look at reserve attendances in England. Man Utd, the best supported club, had an average attendance for reserve games of 486 at Moss Lane in 2010. In a stadium basically on their door step, against rivals reserve teams and other potential starts of the future. In what universe are people living in if they expect Rangers or Celtic fans to hold an interest in colt games against part time players, 2 hours from home?
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1. Believe it or not, 'the Old Firm rule the land' isn't a valid argument. It's a statement; the kind of which I was parodying. The 'sting out of things' is valid in the sense that there's logic behind; just no evidence. As for negative attendance fluctuations - supporters boycotting games against colts teams - it won't happen and everyone knows it. You'd need to be a chump not to cheer-on your team, irrespective of opponent. 

2. I'm just indulging the thought that you might've hoped tearing strips off of Clyde might injure my feelings. Delicious.

 

As for evidence, excluding the Rangers effect, you'll only see a small net average decrease in what are now Leagues 1 and 2 attendances over the past decade. But still a decrease. And the risible demise of all of: Hearts, Hibs and Dundee Utd is the only thing keeping Championship attendance at what's been only a very slight net decrease over the decade. ESPN/Wiki have the statistics.

 

But why examine only the last decade? For a great deal of the post-war era, right up until the seventies and eighties really, average attendances would embarrass the same clubs today. And the country's populations grown in that time; not shrunk.

 

Then there's the national team. Anyone want to say we've gone forward in the last 30-40 years?  Or are likely to? Thought not. My question is: where's the evidence we're not getting worse as a game? You'd be hard pressed to find any. Measure it by money (remember to inflation-adjust), attendance, European success of domestic clubs, success of International teams. Sure there's been a highlight or two. But they're so few and far between that we can all call them to mind instantly; and that's an indictment in itself.

 

 

1. 'Fans will turn up anyway' - Have you looked at the challenge cup attendances? Fans don't turn up against colt teams.

 

2. Crowds - I'll let[mention=11024]HibeeJibee[/mention] rip you apart on this as he does every single time the topic comes up.

 

3. National side - Who gives a f**k? Club football is exponentially more important and any proposal should only be looked at on such basis. Any negative impact on club football to help the sideshow should result in the proposal being thrown out.

 

 

P.s I have emailed my club, make sure you all do on the same

 

 

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1 hour ago, Sao Paulo said:

Full-time, sub-first-team-football in Scotland has long been the place where players with potential go to have it reduced or removed entirely. It's an environment almost completely without incentive; a passing place which barely simulates the reality of a competitive match and where the participants are all justified pessimists about their chances in the big team. I'd like to see that changed. But it's a hard-sell, when the gains are so dispersed and the losses are so concentrated.

Think about tariffs on imported goods. You hear a lot about those in the news at the moment. Sometimes, a government creates them to preserve a domestic industry - like steel manufacturing - which is being out-competed by an equivalent foreign industry. The gain is a concentrated one: thousands of jobs are spared; the unions and the politicians celebrate. And the loss is dispersed: the price of anything made of steel goes up, and any non-steel-industry business which needs steel doesn't hire so many workers because of its cost or, alternatively, it pays-off a whack of workers as a result of the increased price. It's easier to notice and measure the concentration of 'saved jobs' than the dispersal of lost jobs.

Where am I going with this? Well, let's say we let the Scottish Premiership teams field sides in League 2 on the condition that no players older than 21 could feature. The concentrated loss is in the reaction of League 2 and SFL clubs generally. And you can see it expressed on this thread: 'Points are devalued'; 'We hear enough about the Old Firm!'; 'It'd ruin competition!' and so on. The dispersed gain would be in the number of full-time players between the ages of 16-21 who got to experience a genuinely competitive match on a regular basis and who, consequently, were able to realise their potential; at least to a greater extent. Put another way, the floor of quality would be lifted throughout the country. Sure, the 'rich might get richer', but, as is the case now, they don't need all the players they bring into the game. Difference would be they'd get a much better return on their investment if they could get them playing as a unit primed for the first team and have them faced with a proper challenge every week. Connectedly, we'd all see a spill-over supply of better quality players to the lower leagues; and a spill-out of those who were replaceable with the newly better quality feed from above, demanding similar or less wages.

This is all long-term of course; most things worthwhile are. And so it follows that the national team would be likely to see an increase in the quality of players coming into its ranks over time.

Arguments about crowd increases or decreases don't persuade me; I think we'd see only small increased attendance if anything. And noise-making about the sting being taken out of things, or that the Old Firm rule the land; those arguments just bore me.

This is  well worth trying. And you don't need to frame it as 'good for the game'; you'll see a better quality of player at your club over time. Putting up with arrogant derision from Premiership teams' supporters is already inscribed in our system by fact of the U20 teams being allowed-into cups. I don't mind it, even it becomes more frequent. Though on that point - would we get humped every week? - the answer is blatantly 'No'. You don't take a group of young boys into a league of experienced, largely ex-professional players, albeit part-time players, and dish out a drubbing each week. Maybe you pick them off in a midweek game when their legs are gone, but otherwise you're in for a shock if you're expecting an easy ride.

Everyone, critics of this proposal included, seems to acknowledge that the game's in a bad way in Scotland and not just because of Rangers recent destruction. Quality's sliding. Interest is waning. And nobody's got an alternative with any evidence behind it; god forbid we rehash the several tiers of Unders-and-Reserves we had a while back.

I'm a minority of one, I know. But that's nothing new. I say we give it a bash.

Buck the old firm and buck Scotland

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8 minutes ago, parsforlife said:

1. 'Fans will turn up anyway' - Have you looked at the challenge cup attendances? Fans don't turn up against colt teams.


2. Crowds - I'll let @hibbiejibee rip you apart on this as he does every single time the topic comes up.

3. National side - Who gives a f**k? Club football is exponentially more important and any proposal should only be looked at on such basis. Any negative impact on club football to help the sideshow should result in the proposal being thrown out.

 

1. Good job we're not talking about a proposal which pertains to the Challenge Cup then.

2. I follow his posts with interest; nothing I've said is inconsistent with them. Stagnancy is about as much as you say for attendances over the past ten, twenty years. Widen the scope into the times of grainy-photos and cotton-jerseys and there's been a huge drop in attendances not attributable to a 'shift over' to the Old Firm; they got the big crowds then as now. It's just that others got considerably more than they do now. Particularly the bigger top clubs like Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen. But that follows down the tiers, too.

3. I never said I gave a f**k; don't confuse me for someone who does. I used the national team's performance as a signal of the quality of footballing talent coming to the fore in Scotland. I think it's a reasonable, but not perfect, indicator of that. If we were like England or Spain, and routinely imported youngsters who went on to play for other countries, we could say: 'We raise good players, just not our own'. In Scotland, that's not really the case.

Edited by Sao Paulo
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I think we should pilot our top tier sides not signing shite foreigners and English journeymen but instead playing Scottish players.

We should also enlarge the leagues to 16 or 18 to ease constant fear of relegation and encourage playing younger players.

Radical ideas, right?

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I doubt you’d need extra stewarding or police, because nobody would go. Who’s going to bother their arse to contact Rangers or Celtic for an away ticket to see their youth team in a League 2 game, when you could simply walk up and pay on the day through the home gate. You might get a handful for the first game or two, but assuming Berwick stay in this league, Celtic and Rangers youths would be playing at Shielfield 3 times a season each. Any interest in the pointless fixtures (for them) would disappear fairly quickly.

A quick look at reserve attendances in England. Man Utd, the best supported club, had an average attendance for reserve games of 486 at Moss Lane in 2010. In a stadium basically on their door step, against rivals reserve teams and other potential starts of the future. In what universe are people living in if they expect Rangers or Celtic fans to hold an interest in colt games against part time players, 2 hours from home?


I’m switching to in general here, but imagine that with the big team are away to Ross County and the Colts are away to Clyde. I think there could be a “f**k it lets just all go” situation happen and it could be a riot. In the case of Rangers the fans know how fun the smaller away days can be.
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Just to be clear. In no section of that proposal are the benefits to the fans articulated in the way that the benefits to the clubs, the players and the national team are. This is NOT for the benefit of the L2 supporters.

Note that the pilot will be progressed at the same time that L1 & L2 restructures are discussed which will allow the L1 / L2 clubs thoughts' to be heard.
Has anyone heard any demand for league restructure from within the lower leagues? Nope, this is part of the Ann Budge mission to get rid of the smaller teams from League football.

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If someone said to you in a professional context, 'Let's get more people into this kind of work by lowering the standard for entry', you'd probably reject the idea as a concession and a bit patronising.

Soccer-socialism like bigger leagues and play-offs for promotion and relegation are twiddling the dials as policy measures; just like socialism itself, everywhere they're tried, they fail and make things worse long-term. Incentives grow weaker and competition reduces thereby.

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2 minutes ago, dee_62 said:

Just to be clear. In no section of that proposal are the benefits to the fans articulated in the way that the benefits to the clubs, the players and the national team are. This is NOT for the benefit of the L2 supporters.

Note that the pilot will be progressed at the same time that L1 & L2 restructures are discussed which will allow the L1 / L2 clubs thoughts' to be heard.
Has anyone heard any demand for league restructure from within the lower leagues? Nope, this is part of the Ann Budge mission to get rid of the smaller teams from League football.

It could be a no win situation. Refuse them and the professional drawbridge gets pulled up below the Championship. Let them in and reduce the divisions to a seaside stiffs league.

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18 minutes ago, dee_62 said:

I still think playing *with* these seasoned pros would teach the youngsters much more than playing in a team of youngsters *against* the pros.

So do I. And if I thought there was a proposal out there that'd see to that better than this one, I'd back it. As it is, there isn't.

Compelled loans and all that rubbish ain't going to happen. Make a club loan a player against its will and you'll end every youth set-up in the country.

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It could be a no win situation. Refuse them and the professional drawbridge gets pulled up below the Championship. Let them in and reduce the divisions to a seaside stiffs league.


If they pull the drawbridge up, they're back to having no avenue for their colts teams. They need a few lower league teams with older pros, maybe 5 in each division 1x East and 1x west, the rest of the teams are colts. Colts always stay in the league. The other teams can be promoted or relegated via playoffs. With promotion to the championship weighted heavily to the "big" team.
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One of the points raised in favour of the colt idea is that Celtic and rangers youth will be playing in a sustained league campaign and some could one day end up as Scotland caps. 

Well that's great if all 11 were Scottish. We have Myles beerman on loan from rangers and he would likely be one of the colts in the rangers set up. He will never represent Scotland as he has been capped by Malta but he would likely take the place of a "highly promising" young Scot. This is probably not the only example but it's a cheeky lie to say the colts will improve the young scots trying to break through when it will not be 11 young scots on the pitch. 

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So do I. And if I thought there was a proposal out there that'd see to that better than this one, I'd back it. As it is, there isn't.

Compelled loans and all that rubbish ain't going to happen. Make a club loan a player against its will and you'll end every youth set-up in the country.

In the proposal there is mention of a reserve league running in conjunction with the colts / L2 option. How it would all hang together is anyone's guess though.

Call me an old cynic but I struggle to remember a time where Celtic and Rangers have ever worked together for the benefit of Scottish football. I remain to be convinced on this.
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Good Lord, this is all making for depressing reading.

On the bright side, what kind of temper-tantrum can we look forward to from the authorities when they don't manage to force this through? The quotes given to the papers ought to be a thing of passive-aggressive beauty.

No resignations though. Dearie me, no.

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